Mary Jane Collins was born on February 16, 1840 in Somers, Connecticut to Noah Chapin Collins and Elvira Billings Collins. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary from 1856-1858, but suspended her studies when she contracted typhoid fever in the summer of 1857. She developed "lung fever" (probably tuberculosis) in January 1859 and died on September 18, 1859 at the age of nineteen in Somers, Connecticut.